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Sunday, 15 September 2019

In ancient times the steppes of Eurasia
were a cross-continental trade route long before the Silk Road from China was
developed. When the Silk Road became dominant the steppes route faded away.
Apart from a few nomads and settlers not many people ventured that way. It was
over 600 years before a Russian explorer, Nikolay
Przhevalsky (1839-1888), ventured into these forgotten lands.Today Nikolay Przhevalsky is best known
for having a species of small horse named after him. But, although not a
naturalist, Nikolay is also commemorated with many other animals and plants
being named after him. His exploration into the East Asian deserts and
mountains provided much new scientific information and revealed the Europe the
sheer natural diversity of this remote region. Nikolay made five full
expeditions, and today I’ll tell you about the first few.Nikolay followed family tradition by
going into the army. However, he found military life tedious and he read books
on travel and exploration which fired his imagination. He became particularly
interested in exploring the wilderness beyond the Eurasian steppes. His
military training taught him all aspects of reconnaissance and surveying that all
army officers learnt to help them to plan military campaigns. This would help
Nikolay to plan his expeditions.At the military academy Nikolay wrote a
dissertation on all that was then known about Amur, the remote East Asian
territory annexed by Russia in 1858. The dissertation was so comprehensive that
the St. Petersburg Geographical Society made him a member.In 1867 the authorities funded his first
expedition to the Amur region. Nikolay persuaded them to pay for a “personal
assistant”. He would have one of these on all his expeditions, always a young
man or teenager who would act as his protégé. These young men were the focus of
Nikolay’s sexual urges, as evidenced in his letters, and were all probably
platonic.In summer 1867 he set off on his first
expedition. It took him across tundra and lakes and down rivers through remote
villages and Cossack settlements. The summer frosts thawed and melting mountain
snow swelled the rivers. The whole ground was wet and boggy and was a breeding
ground for gnats and mosquitos. Camping out in this environment was certainly
not very pleasant. The almost constant July rain also made it virtually impossible
to dry the plants and animal skins that were collected. Despite these
difficulties the expedition was a huge success and Nikolay wrote up his
journals into a book. This was to make him famous, allowing more expeditions to
be planned.In 1870 Nikolay’s second expedition went
across the Gobi Desert to Beijing through some of the least explored parts of
the Mongolian region. More plant and animal specimens were collected and the
route was thoroughly mapped. This expedition also instilled in Nikolay a hatred
of all things Chinese. He hated the food, he hated the culture. He was
blatantly racist and hated anything that wasn’t European. He wrote that “…only
the rifles and cannons of the Europeans can do any good here”. In truth, China
was in a state of decline and Nikolay never saw the splendour of its heyday.Nikolay’s third expedition began in
1876. He had ambitious plans including a visit to Lhasa, the remote capital of
Tibet, a city no European had ever seen. The route across Siberia took the
expedition through scorching heat to the Altai mountains. Several pack animals
died and local guides proved unreliable. The most ambitious section was to
cross the Takla Makan, a desert so inhospitable that its name means “you go in,
but you don’t come out”. But come out of the desert they did, following a chain
of oases.Eventually Nikolay arrived at the
near-mythical lake of Lop Nor, whose existence was only previously recorded by
Marco Polo and which had recently been rediscovered. Then the expedition moved
west to explore the mountains that separated Takla Makan from Tibet. Nikolay
caught an infection and his young protégé developed a fever. Despite this
Nikolay carried on. The heat was unbearable. A lot of wells had virtually dried
up and scorpions scuttled into their tents at night. Nikolay’s infection
worsened and soon riding a horse was too painful because of the itching sores
and an abscess on his back-side. The colder autumn eased the itching but
Nikolay was so weak by now that a makeshift cart was made to transport him.
Even though physically incapacitated he was still very much in charge.Several other members of the expedition
caught the same infection, and then Nikolay learnt of the death of his other
during the summer. He and the expedition became depressed and despondent and
Nikolay decided to abandon the venture and return home, if for no other reason
than to recover fully from his infection.It wasn’t long before Nikolay organised
his next expedition that would take him into Tibet. He set off at the beginning
of 1879 and with 23 camels carrying food, provisions, equipment, guns and
home-made strawberry jam (a gift for the Dalai Lama), the expedition made its
way to the frontier post of Zaysan in the Altai Mountains.It was there that Nikolay was presented
with an animal skin by a local chief. It was the skin of a small horse. Nikolay
sent it back to St. Petersburg where it was examined and confirmed as a new
species. It was later named after Nikolay – Przhevalsky’s horse. Nikolay
finally got to see a living specimen for himself in May 1879.After resting at Zaysan for a while
Nikolay and his expedition began to move towards Tibet and the fabled city of
Lhasa. Did he make it? Sorry to keep you in suspense, but I’ll tell you next
month.

Sunday, 1 September 2019

It’s been a while since I
gave a list of asteroids (minor planets) named after members and allies of the
lgbt community. So here’s a new selection. The number before each name is the official
number designated to that asteroid. The explanation following each name is
based on the citations given when the names were published, to which I’ve added
information illustrating relevance to the lgbt community. The numerical order
of asteroids is not necessarily the same order in which they were either
discovered or named.You may wonder why some
asteroids are not named until many years after they were discovered. There’s
several reasons for this. Once discovered an asteroid is given a reference
number. No asteroid is named until it’s compete orbit has been calculated, and
this may take some time because there may be very few observations on which to
make an accurate calculation. The final number of the asteroids, the ones you
see listed below, were assigned at the same time as their name. Many asteroids
are only known by their number for several years until someone decides to give
it a name. Some asteroids are named for a specific reasons, as in the case of
the one named after Freddie Mercury below.(65)
Cybele

Discovered 8 March 1861.

Named after the Phrygian
goddess Cybele shortly after its discovery. Early legends of Cybele relate how
she was born intersex and had the name Agdistis. The gods feared this
double-gendered deity and castrated her and thus she became Cybele. The
asteroid was originally named Maximiliana after King Maximilian II of Bavaria
(father of the gay King Ludwig II). At the time asteroids were given ancient
classical names, and Maximiliana was regarded as non-classical and was changed
to Cybele after protests from the most esteemed astronomers of the day.

(4544) Xanthus

Discovered
31 March 1989. Name published 27 June 1997.

Xanthus
is one of the most obscure of the many Greek names of Apollo, the pansexual god
of the Sun, archery, healing, prophecy and song. Xanthus means “the Fair”. This
asteroid was given one of the names of Apollo because is a member of the Apollo
group, asteroids whose orbits bring them close to Earth and may hit us. (4544)
Xanthus last crossed our orbit on 12th August at the point where we will be on
30th November.

(6039)
Parmenides

Discovered 3 September 1989.
Name published 15 April 1995.

Named after Parmenides of
Elea (late 5th century BC), a philosopher. In his lengthy poem “On Nature”, of
which only a small part has been preserved, he considered the plurality of
things as the appearance of only one eternal reality, whatever that means. He
also suggested that the Earth was a sphere, an idea that found few supporters,
except from his young protégé and lover Zeno. Parmenides and Zeno were spotted
by Socrates as visitors to the Great Panathenaic Games.

(9014)
Svyatorichter

Discovered 22 October 1985.
Name published 26 July 2000.

Svyatoslav Teofilovich
Richter (1915-1997) was a Russian pianist and People’s Artist of the USSR.
Then, as now, Russia was homophobic, and though Richter was never openly gay
his sexuality was an open secret in the Russian music world who recognised the
string of male companions as his lovers.

(11964) Catullus

Discovered
12 August 1994. Name published 9 April 2009.

The
Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (84 BC–54 BC) still influences poetry and
art to this day. His poem Carmina 16 is notorious for its explicitness. It is
one of several poems he wrote which mentions a youth, or Juventius, who is
widely regarded as being Catullus’s lover. Catullus also had a girlfriend
called Lesbia.

(12607) Alcaeus

Discovered
24 September 1960. Name published 24 November 2007.

Alcaeus (c.620 BC-c.580 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos.
His songs are as famous as those of Sappho (who also has an asteroid named
after her). Alcaeus was said to have been Sappho’s lover. He also wrote poems
to several of his young male lovers, including Lycos and Menon.

(14505) Barentine

Discovered 12 January 1996, Name
published 6 January 2007.

Named after Dr. John Caleb Barentine (b.1976) who
served as an observing specialist at the Apache Point Observatory telescope
from 2001 to 2006, and then as an observer for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Trained in stellar astronomy, he was introduced to planetary work by his
colleagues Gil Esquerdo and Carol Neese, who suggested his name for this
asteroid. Dr. Barentine is currently the Director of Conservation for the
International Dark-Sky Association. He is also an author on the history of
astronomy, and a member of the 500 Queer Scientists organisation.

(17473) Freddiemercury

Discovered 21 March 1991. Name published on 3 September
2016, the 70th anniversary of his birth.

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) was a British songwriter and
the lead singer for the legendary rock group Queen. His distinctive sound and
large vocal range were hallmarks of his performance style, and he is regarded
as one of the greatest rock singers of all time. The name was suggested by the
provisional designation given to this asteroid before its full orbit was
calculated – 1991 FM3. The letters FM inspired the choice of Freddie Mercury’s
name; 1991, the year it was discovered, was the year Freddie died. Fellow Queen
band member and astronomer Brian May and Dr. Joel Parker of the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, were instrumental in getting this
asteroid named in time for Freddie’s 70th anniversary.

(36445)
Smalley

Discovered 23 August 2000.
Name published 21 September 2002.

Named after Kyle Smalley
(1961-2018), a software developer, amateur astronomer and team member of the
Powell Observatory Near-Earth-Object programme. She then went to work as a
software developer at the Minor Planet Centre, the official body responsible for
the cataloguing and naming of asteroids. It was while working there that she
transitioned and lived as Sonia Keys.

(58196) Ashleyess

Discovered 10 March 1992. Name published 20 May 2008.

Ashley Caroline Steel (b.1959) is the sister of Daniel Steel who
discovered this asteroid and has been very supportive of his career. Ashley was the vice-chair and global head of transport for KPMG,
from which she retired in 2014. Currently she holds non-executive roles on the
boards of National Express, GoCo and the BBC. She has been named one of the
UK's most influential gay people and appeared on the annual “Pink List”
published by The Independent newspaper for several consecutive years from 2006.

ASTEROID ALLIES

(4049) Noragal’

Discover 31 August 1973. Name published 17 March 1995.

Named after Eleonora Yakovlevna Gal'perina (1912-1992), literary
critic and translator, well-known under the pseudonym Nora Gal' for her Russian
translations of foreign works. She was the grandmother of gay poet Nikolai
Kuzmin (b.1968).

(6692) Antonínholý

Discovered
18 April 1985. Name published 2 June 2015.

Dr.
Antonín Holý (1936–2012) was a renowned Czech chemist who significantly
contributed to the development of antiretroviral drugs used in the treatment of
HIV and hepatitis B. He was the author of more than 400 scientific papers and
was awarded with honorary degrees from several universities at home and abroad.

(19175) Peterpiot

Discovered
2 August 1991. Name published 8 October 2014.

Dr.
Peter Piot (b.1949), a Belgian physician, co-discovered the ebola virus in
Zaire in 1976. In addition to providing the foundations of our understanding of
HIV infection, he is the author of 16 books and 500 scientific articles. He has
been the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine since
2010. He was created a baron by the King of Belgium and an Honorary Knight
Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth II.

(52665) Brianmay

Discovered
30 January 1998, Name published 18 Jun 2008.

Brian May (b.1947) is lead guitarist and songwriter for the rock
group Queen which featured Freddie Mercury (for whom Brian campaigned to have
an asteroid named). In 2007 Brian received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from
Imperial College London for a thesis on zodiacal dust. Eight months later he
became Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Brian is also the
co-founder of Asteroid Day, the annual observance on June 30th to raise
awareness of the possibility of an asteroid (such as Xanthus, one of the Apollo
Group mentioned above) hitting Earth. In 2016 Brian May was named Celebrity
Straight Ally at the British LGBT Awards. The name for this asteroid was
suggested by legendary British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore.

Through all my “Asteroid Updates” I’ve not shown you where any of
them are. You may have a vague idea of the asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter. Most asteroids orbit there. Only very large telescopes can see them.

This illustration above shows the orbits of three of the asteroids
I’ve listed today in relation to the orbits of the major planets of the inner
solar system. The illustration isn’t exactly to scale (the Sun would be less
than a pixel and not a yellow dot) but the general orbits are in their correct
relative position, even down to the fact the Sun is off-centre.

Orbits of the planets are in grey except for the Earth, which is
in red. The orbits of (65) Cybele, (4544) Xanthus and (17473) Freddiemercury
are shown in different colours.

Cybele is one of the outermost asteroids in the main belt. There
are many other asteroids that go beyond which we don’t need to concern
ourselves about today. You can probably see that the orbit of Xanthus, as a
member of the near-Earth-orbit asteroid of the Apollo group, crosses our orbit
twice a year. Just like the asteroid Apollo itself Xanthus could hit us in the
far and distant future.

Thursday, 15 August 2019

[Homohoax – a hoax,
prank or fake news that was created by a member of the lgbt community, about
the lgbt community, or which effected members of it.]The harvest season in
underway, and there’s one thing that has become conspicuous by its absence in
recent years - crop circles, those geometric patterns of flattened cereal that
seemed to appear overnight in fields across the world. Scientists could not
come up with an explanation. They didn’t know how they were formed, or by whom,
or by what. Other people, however, were certain what they were. They were
patterns created by aliens of their spaceships. Belief in these crop circles became
quite popular for a while, and some people still go looking for them.Before I go further I
should point out that the crop circles I refer to in this article are the ones
which began to appear in the UK in the 1970s and were revealed in the 1990s to
be a hoax and were created by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, and by other
hoaxers.I also have to admit that
I had an open mind about crop circles at the time. I was an impressionable
young teenager, though I could never believe they were created by aliens. I
grew up in a rural village surrounded by wheat and barley fields but we never
had any appear in my area.One of the “champions” of
crop circles was an openly gay ex-Ministry of Defence civil servant called Ralph Noyes (1923-1998).Ralph Noyes was probably
born in South Africa. Ten months after his birth he and his British parents are
recorded on the passenger list of a ship sailing from Durban to Southampton. He
was definitely a “child of the empire” and spent some time growing up in the
West Indies. By 1933 his parents had, apparently, separated because his mother was
remarried to a man called Reginald Hanney. Ralph changed his surname by deed
poll in 1947 to Noyes-Hanney, though there’s no indication that he ever used it.During World War II Ralph
served in the RAF which led to him becoming a civil servant in what is now
called the Ministry of Defence after 1945. In the latter half of his career he
was employed at the Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a, what was popularly known as the
“UFO desk”. Part of Ralph’s job was to answer letters from the public about UFO
sightings. His contribution to the investigations into UFOs is worthy of a
separate article, which I may get round to writing some time next year.At around the same time that
crop circles began to appear in the 1970s Ralph Noyes had become an Assistant
Under-Secretary of State and had come out as gay. He appeared in one of the
earliest British television series aimed at the lgbt community called “Gay
Life” in 1981. Ralph retired from the Ministry of Defence a year later.Ralph was also involved in
investigation paranormal and mysterious phenomena. He was the Hon. Secretary of
the Society for Psychical Research. While it is certain that Ralph was
interested in the paranormal it is also clear that he was equally interested in
the proper scientific research into these events and eager to find proof and
reason behind them. However, he was often open to less scientific answers to
some phenomena, never dismissing them until he could prove they were wrong.In 1976, the year after
Ralph left the Ministry of Defence, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley created their
first crop circle. They caused a sensation and soon more appeared around the UK
and the world. Ralph Noyes became interested in them very quickly, mainly
because of the widely held belief that they were created by aliens and
spaceships, and while the scientific world generally denounced such theories
Ralph threw himself into research into these strange creations.After several years Ralph
Noyes had become one of the leading figures in cereology (yes, they even gave
crop circle research a pseudo-scientific name) and in 1990 he edited and
published a collection of writings on crop circles which is still highly
regarded in the world of cereology. It was called “The Crop Circle Enigma”. In
the same year Ralph and fellow cereologist Michael Green founded the Centre for
Crop Circle Studies (CCCS). This too was aimed at proper scientific
investigation.

Ralph Noyes’ appearance in a 1984 Japanese documentary on UFOs; inset, the front cover of the first edition of his book “The Crop Circle Enigma”, published in 1990.

Very early on the CCCS
looked into the possibility that crop circles were not a new phenomenon and
that evidence could be found in the thousands of aerial photographs of the
country of pre-1976 crop circles. They found none that were like those
appearing after 1976. Similar research by the Wessex Skeptics, a group set up
to debunk crop circles, UFOs, spoon-benders, and the like, came to the same
conclusion. Ralph was quite happy to support their findings.By this time, the
beginning of the 1990s, the hoax crop circles of Doug Bower and Dave Chorley
were themselves being hoaxed. To Ralph Noyes these fakes were obvious. He wrote
to the Times newspaper on 25th July 1991 expressing his dismay that many of
these copycat circles were “not only troublesome to farmers but muddies the
scientific record”.In September 1991 Doug
Bower and Dave Chorley revealed that they had created the crop circles which
sparked off the whole crop circle craze.In 1992 the CCCS held its
first international conference in Winchester. In the same month Ralph joined
fellow cereologists in several night vigils at crop circle sites in the area.
It seems that, by now, Ralph had become disillusioned by the whole idea of crop
circle studies. Dismayed by the confessions of Bower and Chorley, and by the
many copycat circles that he thought “muddled” his scientific research into genuine
circles, he resigned from the CCCS later that year. It did not, however, dampen
his interest in paranormal and mysterious events and he continued to be a
member of the Society for Psychical Research and write articles.Ralph remained a highly
respected figure in cereology after his departure from the CCCS. His main
contribution to the world of the mysterious and unexplained, however, was in
the study of UFOs. It is this subject to which I’ll return some time next year.

Thursday, 1 August 2019

There have been few family
histories that I have looked in to that have contained such a variety of events
as those I uncovered during research for today’s featured lgbt individual – Shelley
Beattie (1967-2008). Selecting which to present in this snapshot of Shelley’s
ancestry has been difficult.Shelley Beattie’s own life
was a varied as those of her ancestors. There’s action, struggles, and
adventure on the high seas.Perhaps what Shelley is
best remembered for is her role as Siren in “American Gladiators” on television
between 1992 and 1997. Before that she was a leading competitive bodybuilder,
appearing on the covers of fitness and physique magazines.Shelley’s success belies
the fact that she was also deaf. Fortunately, she developed excellent
lip-reading and speaking skills that led many to be surprised to learn she had
a hearing impairment. She was a fighter all her life, not necessarily in the
physical sense but in overcoming other challenges and finding her way in life.
Sadly, this created mental health problems which led to her taking her own
life. Her ancestry also shows the challenges and struggles thrown at previous
generations of her family.Shelley had a lot of
German blood through her mother, though most of her ancestry was Celtic. The
Beattie family originally came from Roxburghshire in Scotland, near the border
with England. Shelley’s great-grandfather Thomas Beattie migrated with his wife
and infant son, first to Alberta, Canada, in 1904, and then to the US in 1923.
Both of Shelley’s parents are descended from Scottish and Irish immigrants. Her
various ancestral immigrant families arrived in the US from the first days of
colonial settlement up to her great-grandfather’s arrival.The sea and sea travel
appear a lot in Shelley’s ancestry. Coming from a family on the Californian
coast she was never far from the sea, and her grandmother Helen was buried at
sea. Shelley herself spent time on the high seas as a member of the first
all-female team to compete in the Americas Cup sailing challenge in 1994 and
1995. I wonder if Shelley adopted the name Siren when she became an American
Gladiator in 1992 as a conscious decision to link herself to the sea (sirens
are the fabled sea-enchantresses who lure sailors to their death). But then
perhaps the name was chosen by the series producers.And this leads us on to an
unexpected part of Shelley’s ancestry. Adventure on the high seas is in her
blood. Through her paternal grandmother Shelley was descended from Benjamin
Haxton. He was the son of Scottish immigrants and was born in Connecticut
colony in 1705. By 1737 he had become a ship’s carpenter. The only ship we know
for sure Benjamin served on was the “Charming Betty”. This is a well-recorded
vessel and its name belies the nature of its fame. For some “Charming Betty”
was far from charming.This period in the history
of the American east coast was still intimately linked with events in Europe,
largely because the powers in Europe had neighbouring colonies in America, and
the conflicts between them played out on both continents.The War of the Austrian
Succession (referred to by the English colonists as King George’s War) broke
out in 1744. It was one of those international wars which revolved around
dynastic power struggles. In the American colonies it primarily involved
conflict between the English and French.“Charming Betty” was one
of several ships to which the British government gave letters of marque. This
meant that these ships had the legal permission to attack any French ship,
capture its cargo and ransom a prisoner. In effect, “Charming Betty” was a
privateer (the polite name for a pirate ship).In 1746 when Benjamin
Haxton was the “Charming Betty” ship’s carpenter the vessel had already
captured one French ship called “St. Charles” in 1744. Whether Benjamin was a
crew member in 1744 isn’t certain, but he may have been on board “Charming
Betty” when it fought against a French frigate in 1747. Many prisoners were
taken in that skirmish and many were killed.Benjamin survived his
pirating years and went to live with his family in Greene County, New York
province. Ironically, he was killed in his own home by native Americans in
1754.Staying on the sea we
encounter Mayflower Pilgrims in Shelley’s ancestry. Through her maternal
great-grandmother Delna Little (1906-1995) Shelley was descended from the
Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke (from the same village as my own ancestors at
the time, so I wonder if they knew each other). There’s also an unproven line
of descent from the Mayflower’s Samuel Fuller.Also through Delna Little
Shelley Beattie had other ancestry which links to another group of religious
refugees. Delna’s own great-grandmother was Susanna Young (1795-1852), the
sister of Brigham Young, the second President of the Mormon church. Delna’s
grandfather (Susanna’s son) was a Mormon Patriarch, James Amasa Little. Just
like the earlier Mayflower Pilgrims the Mormons were persecuted for their
beliefs and sought a safe haven to worship. The Pilgrims sailed across the
Atlantic to New England. The Mormons, led by Brigham Young and his family,
travelled across the USA to found Salt Lake City.Taking Shelley Beattie’s
ancestry as a whole, her ancestry is dominated by the Celtic heritage of
Scotland and Ireland. As with a lot of immigrant descendants there’s many
stories of struggle against life’s challenges, whether it leads to the need to
migrate and just survive in a new country, or the need to face personal
challenges.Finally, yes, Shelley had
royal blood. Through Susannah Young Shelley was descended from King Edward I of
England (1239-1307).

Monday, 15 July 2019

This time of year is often
referred to as the Dog Days of summer. This is a traditional name for the
hottest and sultry days of the year, so named because the brightest night-time
star the Dog Star, Sirius. The Romans believed that when Sirius rose in the sky
before dawn in the summer months its heat was added to that of the Sun.I have to admit that I’m
not good with dogs. I was attacked by an alsatian when I was about 7 (when
you’re that young an alsatian is as high as your shoulder) and I still have
nightmares about dogs. As a complete contrast, there’s one historical lgbt
individual who is said to have loved dogs so much that he acquired the nickname
of “the Dog Shogun”. His actual name was Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709) and he
was the 5th shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty.

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi

In recent decades the
reputation of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi has undergone a bit of revision. For
centuries he had the reputation of being a bad ruler, a tyrant who eccentricities
included favouring the welfare of dogs over humans and of elevating his many
male lovers into positions of power.As I have found out time
and time again in the 40 years that I have been a dedicated historian what is
written and accepted as historical fact often concentrates on one culturally
biased opinion. In the case of Tsunayoshi that bias was contained in a very
influential document called “Sanno Gaiki”. This had been accepted as the
authoritative account of Tsunayoshi’s reign. It was written after he had died
and was more of a critical parody than a history of his reign, and even though
people recognised this as the time, people and historians gradually began to
believe every word of it.Despite the fact that
Japanese historians just a century after his death had tried to rehabilitate
Tsunayoshi’s reputation “Sanno Gaiki” had become too fixed in the popular mind
for it not to take root. By the end of the 20th century many historians were
attempting to “correct” this fake history.Perhaps the biggest effect
on Tsunayoshi’s reputation is his fondness for dogs and his famous nickname
“the Dog Shogun”. From being an insult to being turned into a by-name for
animal compassion this nickname has various legends surrounding it.The origin of this
nickname centre round the “laws of compassion” introduced by Tsunayoshi from
1687 onwards. These were a series of laws which gave protection to animals and
punishments for animal cruelty, including death. Even though later historians
concentrated on the protection of dogs the laws also included protection of
cruelty against other animals - birds, horses and even grasshoppers. Protection
for abandoned children was also a large part of these laws.The dog connection is
compounded by the fact that Tsunayoshi was born in the Japanese Year of the
Dog. The “Sanno Gaiki” added to this by fabricating the legend that a Buddhist
priest had told Tsunayoshi’s mother that the shogun had mistreated dogs in a
former life and the death of his son and heir was a punishment. The priest said
that only laws against cruelty to dogs would lift the curse of a childless
shogun.Dogs seemed to have a dual
identity during the rule of the shoguns. On the one hand dogs were closely
associated with the samurai and were a symbol of their ferocity. The samurai
would breed and train hundreds of dogs for hunting. Over time there were too
many for the samurai to keep and many dogs were either killed or left to stray
the countryside.Cities were often overrun
with stray dogs. They attacked other animals and even children in search of
food. Cruelty to dogs was already punishable and Shogun Tsunayoshi’s laws of
compassion added an additional condition which stated that not feeding stray
dogs was also cruelty and punishable. Most people, however, were under the
impression that feeding any dog would make them legally responsible for the
animal and avoided them. This led to an increase in stray dogs. The solution
was to build massive dog shelters and kennels. When I say massive I mean that
the kennels housed over 100,000 stray dogs.Unfortunately for these
dogs, when Tsunayoshi died his son and successor closed down all the kennels.
It’s not certain what happened to all the dogs. The location of these kennels
is commemorated today in a set of statue dogs outside Nakano City Hall in Tokyo
(pictured below). The kennels may be the main reason why the Japanese went on
to associate Tsunayoshi with them more than any other animal.

So that’s why Tokugawa
Tsunayoshi became known as the Dog Shogun as a name of shame – a man who
preferred dogs to people. But his reputation was smeared further by accusation
of him promoting his male lovers to high office. What’s the truth about that?As a samurai Tsunayoshi
was no stranger to same-sex activity. In something very much like the ancient
Greek practice whereby soldiers take younger male lovers the samurai had a
similar system called shodu. As with the Greek practice shodu was more a rite
of passage for the younger partner and, also as with the Greeks, it developed
into a life-long platonic friendship. Neither practices can be said to be truly
homosexual in our modern sense of the word but was strongly homo-social. The
fact that both practices saw the man-youth sexual relationship as normal is
what makes it a big part in lgbt heritage of our understanding of human
sexuality.Tsunayoshi is known to
have had several young male lovers as well as a wife and several concubines.
That, too, was normal. The claim made by a ruler’s critics of lovers and
favourites being promoted to high office is common in most societies, even if
there’s no evidence of same-sex activity. However, there seems to be hints in
Tsunayoshi’s behaviour that may indicate that he did prefer male partners.One of these hints is his
friendship with Yanagisawa Yoshigasu, one of the many attendants at the
shogun’s court. Yoshigasu was from a samurai family of imperial descent. He and
the future shogun Tsunayoshi met in 1665 when he was 7 years old and Tsunayoshi
was 19. Later historians also painted Yoshigasu as a bad court official though
his reputation has been undergoing the same revision as the shogun.Yoshigasu was a general
attendant at the court. In 1675 he became a page at Tsunayoshi’s residence.
Five years later when Tsunayoshi became shogun Yoshigasu joined him in Edo
palace and soon began to rise in the hierarchy of attendants. He had no formal
training in government or politics yet in 1688 shogun Tsunayoshi appointed him
as his Great Chamberlain. This angered many officials and samurai families.While there’s no actual
evidence of a gay relationship between the two men in our modern sense, one may
have been carried out in the form of the traditional samurai shudo before
Tsunayoshi became shogun. There was a strong personal connections between the
two through a shared interest in Confucian classics, though this alone is
hardly enough to propel a humble attendant to the high office of Great
Chamberlain. So, perhaps there was more going on between them.As in a lot of historical
instances evidence to prove a relationship one way or another is lacking, and
the change in social attitudes to everything from sexuality to politics changes
with each generation.Given that the samurai
code of shudo with its same-sex relationships was common in 17th century Japan
it is unlikely that the Dog Shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, didn’t have male
lovers.

About Me

I was born during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960 and was brought up in a village in north Nottinghamshire. I attended the sort of school which practiced “history for girls, geography for boys”, but developed a love of history none-the-less.